Through Different Eyes
by Kibayasha
Summary: There were ten-thousand trapped in SAO. That's twenty thousand eyes, each one seeing different things than the last. Everyone has their own experience, even if it's from the same event. Here's the experience of a teenage boy and his childhood friends as they play Sword Art Online and try to survive. Rated T for occasional bad language and for violence.
1. Link Start!

**A/N: This whole story is based on the anime, because I haven't read the books yet. I may have a detail or two from the books, but if I do it's because someone told be about it. Also, Masato is his first name and Yamada is his last.**

 **Edit: Chapter two turned out better than chapter one, so if you don't like chapter one, at least read chapter two before you decide that it's bad.**

I'll cut straight to the point. My name is Masato Yamada. I'm a fourteen year old boy. I've got brown messy hair, a skinny build, and I'm average height for my age. I've always been a geek, and games have always sorta been my thing. I was going to pick a new one up after school, in fact. It was the last class of the day and I could hardly wait. Some company just came out with this new technology! "NerveGear," was it? Anyway, it sends you into the game. They're calling it a "VRMMORPG," but that's too long, so I probably won't be saying it again. I had just made enough money to buy it the yesterday, but I had to babysit to get it and I got home decently late. I hadn't had time to buy it then, but I promised myself that I'd buy it first thing after school.

It took a while, but the bell finally rang after what felt like an eternity. I grabbed my bag and stood up almost instantly. I quickly through my books into the bag and took off. I passed so many people, but I didn't have time to stop. I saw several of my friends, who all said hello. I waved but didn't slow my pace.

Once I'd gotten out of the building, I noticed something. There was a group of four girls. Three of the girls seemed to be picking on the one with glasses. I recognized one of them immediately, Endou. Who was that other girl? It didn't matter, I was in a hurry. Besides, it wasn't my problem.

It was a sunny and warm day. Perfect weather to stay inside and play videogames.

I ran until I found a big line outside of the store. That's how I knew that I was in the right place. I had to get in the back, which was really disappointing. It was such a long line. Would there even be any copies left by the time I got there? There was a variety of people here, I noticed. There were people of all ages, but not necessarily what you would call "gamers."

A moment later, I felt a light tapping on the shoulder. "I thought I might find you here." A familiar voice said from behind me.

I spun around to come face to face with someone I recognized. It was a girl from my school. Her name's Hisa Murakamai, and she's an old friend of mine. She was a little shorter than myself, and she had blond hair that reached down her back. She was my age, roughly, but sometimes acted a lot more mature. Key word being "sometimes."

"What are you doing here? I thought you already had it." I asked.

"Hoshi and I came to save you a spot in line."

Hoshiko Suko was another one of my friends. We just call him Hoshi, it's shorter. The three of us had been friends for as long as I can remember. We all go to the same school and live in the same neighborhood, plus our families have been friends since before we were born. So needless to say we've seen a lot of eachother.

She grabbed me by the arm and dragged me further up the line. There I saw Hoshi, waiting for us. He had short brown hair and was quite a bit shorter than I was. He was the youngest in the grade and had the height and size to match. Hisa and I were pretty much responsible for keeping him out of trouble and keeping people from picking on him.

"What took you so long?" He said.

"It's not my fault! Masato took _forever_ to get hear." Hisa joked.

"Will you knock it off! I got hear as fast as I could, but I had to run home and get my wallet! I can't carry it with me at school, I don't trust almost any of those people!" I snapped.

"I've been standing here for days!" Hoshi yelled playfully.

"Really?" I asked.

"He did. I had to keep running out and bring him stuff to eat." Hisa said.

As that conversation came to an end, our time waiting in line did as well. Hoshi and I both bought a NerveGear set and a copy of the game. We were so excited!

"Did Hoshi really skip school just to save me a spot?" I thought to myself, feeling bad that I'd made him wait so long. "He got it too though, and I never asked, so it's not like it's my fault." I finally decided.

After we left we went straight home. Nothing unusual happened. We walked down the road and all went our separate ways to go home.

It took a while, but the official launch of the game was finally here! Almost as soon as I'd woken up I'd gotten out of bed and plugged in the game.

"Link start!" I said, as instructed by the manual. I'm glad I bothered to read it this time!

When I got on, I got to design and name an avatar. I made him large and tall with black hair and a scar across his face. I tried to make him as intimidating as I could. For the character tag, I just put my name.

When I got on I was so excited. It was amazing. The sky's sunny and had a few clouds, but I'm assuming that's what it always looks like. I went walking through the plaza. The buildings looked a lot more old fashioned than I was use to. It's better than I'd thought it'd be.

I heard a familiar voice coming from behind me. "It's a bad idea to use your real name for your gamer tag ya know." It said.

I turned around to find who could only have been Hisa. The voice was all too familiar. I wonder how the game knows our voices, but that's not important.

Her gamer tag was "Muramai," which was just her last name with a character missing in the middle. She used that for everything, just like how I usually just use my name. I don't waist my time with stuff like that.

Her character was a little over half the height of mine with long pink hair. Her character was made to look calming, so people would let their guard down. I of all people know that once you do, she kicks your but. She's done it to me a ton of times.

"Where's Hoshi?" I asked, looking around. It wasn't until then that I realized how off my voice sounded on this character.

"Follow me!"

She led me into a field, where a tall skinny person was waiting. This person was a head shorter than I, and not even a third the size. Since the gamer tag is only visible by looking at their interface, I couldn't tell what his gamer tag said.

"I wanna show you something!" A voice that I recognized called out.

"You're gonna need this." Hisa said giving me a sword.

I instantly knew what the man was trying to do. I got ready to fight, and so did he. I attacked, but he countered. Hoshi has never been particularly good at games, so this couldn't be him, could it? The man used a trick that caused his sword to light up yellow. I froze. 'What's that!?' I thought to myself. He knocked me to the ground. He held his sword to my throat, but got in close enough for me to see his gamer tag. Hoshi!? 'Of all the people that it could've been, it had to be the one person it thought it _wasn't_.'

Hisa sat off to the side on a rock. She was cracking up. Her laughter was so loud, I'm surprised the two guys practicing on pigs a distance away didn't notice. She was laughing so hard that she fell of the rock, but just kept laughing!

"What was that!?" I asked.

"It's called a sword skill. Hisa taught it to me."

"What? Hisa, you need to teach me that!" I yelled.

"I could," She paused, "But it'll be more fun watching you try to figure it out." She chuckled.

"Oh, come on!" I shouted. "Why not!?"

She gave a joking sigh began to walk over to me. "Alright." She moaned. "It's called a 'sword skill.' Here's how you use it."

She began to demonstrate how to activate it while I stood up. She held her sword back and down and she kept one hand up. The sword began to glow blue. She lunged forward and attacked at nothing. The blue light trailed through the air as she struck. 'That was amazing!' I thought.

She went into an explanation of how it works and then started explaining the different basic Sword Skills. It's not that I was trying to not listen, but she kind of lost me pretty early. I heard just enough of what she was saying to figure out how to use a sword skill, but I don't know what ones there are. 'I'll figure that out later.' I decided.

"Hey, are you listening! This stuff is important!" She shouted. In all fairness, I actually wasn't. "Like I was saying, there are all kinds of them. There's blacksmithing, detection, sneaking, and a bunch more." She explained.

"All kinds of what?" I asked.

"So you weren't listening!" She retorted. "I meant Skills! There are countless of them." She explained.

"Ok, but what weapons are there?" I asked.

"Swords, knives, hammers, axes, you name it! The only thing that I know they don't have is magic or modern weapons, and I'm not sure if they have bows." She said.

"Well, I can live without those. Do they have a katana!?" I asked, nearly yelling.

"Yeah, they've got a few." She answered.

"Awesome! What's the best sword in the game?" I asked extremely curiously.

"I don't know. The beta testers only got to floor eight, and there's no way they got a floor one-hundred item that early on." She explained.

"What if we got the most powerful sword in the game?" I asked.

"We'd probably fight over it." Hoshi answered.

"Yeah, and I'd win." Hisa joked with a giggle.

"Maybe now, but I've made it my goal to be better than you." I retorted jokingly.

"Like that could happen!" She laughed. "I bet you're not even smart enough to open the menu!" She joked.

"Um," I paused. "Menu?"

Hisa sighed, "You really _are_ an idiot." She said, smiling.

I lost track of time. Hisa spent a while showing us a few of the Sword Skills she told us about. The sun was setting, and it almost looked better than the actual thing.

"This stuff is gonna be hard to remember." I commented.

"It will for you, because you're dumb." She remarked jokingly.

I opened my mouth to make a comeback, but was cut off by a teleport. 'What's going on?' My thoughts puzzled.

I looked around to find myself in the middle of Town of Beginnings. The sky was enveloped in hexagons and began to bleed. The blood came together and formed a floating man. He told us that he was the GM and maker of the game, Akihiko Kayaba. I was relieved to see that I wasn't the only one who was confused. My relief was short lived. He went into an explanation of what we were doing here. He told us that he gave us an item, which turned out to be a mirror. Suddenly everyone started changing. I was no excepting. I wasn't my avatar anymore, I was me. And Hisa was Hisa and Hoshi was Hoshi. He told us that we're trapped and to get out, we have to finish the game. He finished his explanation and disappeared.

Panic broke out. Hoshi and I both fell to our knees, unable to believe what Kayaba had just told us. Even Hisa, who usually keeps a cool head, froze with a fearful expression. We're all going to die here, scared, sad, and, for some of them, alone.

 **A/N:** **My proof reader hasn't read this all the way through yet, so I'm sorry for any mistakes.** **What do you guys think, give me some feedback! I have a lot ideas stored up for this and there are plenty of surprises awaiting Masato, I hope you all stick around to see them! Until next time!**

 **Edit: He got around to reading it. I hope you enjoyed it!**


	2. My New Life

A/N: Sorry it took me so long. I got writers block half way through the chapter and ended up just trashing what I had and rewriting it. Then there was the matter of getting my proofreader to read it.

I've already lost track of how many days we've been here, but it couldn't have been much more than a week or so. Everything is so different here. Our version of getting grocery is farming for food items because we spend so much money on the room we share and try to save as much as we can otherwise. Our version of erind runs is usually going questing. Our hobbies are killing monster and training our skills.

It's not all bad, I admit. We've got a system worked out for our room. We take turns with the bed, since there's only one. Hisa gets it first, me second, and Hoshi last. We don't have a problem with buying the bed off each other from time to time, although it makes keeping track of the who's turn it is harder. But, oh well, that's Hisa's job.

Also, we've gotten a lot of training done. Hisa's become good with a Katana, and I use a longsword, but I think I could use any sword if I had too. I don't seem to be particularly good at using any sword, but I'm not bad either. Hoshi's gotten really good at using a sidesword but he also keeps several swords for throwing and a bunch of throwing picks. Needless to say, he's good at throwing things. Unfortunately most of our gear is cheap and needs repairing or replacing often.

But it doesn't matter, we get by just fine. We've joined the party that's been trying to clear the Labyrinth, the big tower where the boss should be. That should put us in a better financial situation than we're in, but Hisa came up with the idea to put a bunch of money aside to buy Teleportation Crystals, which I think are way overpriced.

Despite our efforts and the efforts of the others in the "front lines," we still haven't found the boss yet. It would go a lot faster than it is if there were more people doing. Not even close to one-hundredth of the players in the game are participating. It probably doesn't help that two-thousand of them are dead already.

"You think they'll find the boss anytime soon?" Hoshi asked, sitting down at the table with a bowl of soup.

The room looked cheap, with hard floors and plain gray walls. There was only one small bed and one table against the wall. The table way pretty much an even square and not very big. There was only room for one of us on each side, which is fine since there's only three. There were two separate rooms branching off from the main room, one of which was a bathroom and the other of which was a small kitchen. There was a single lamp next to the bed that somehow offered enough light to keep the main room lit. There was one rectangular window on the wall across from the door that led to the rest of the inn. It had a decent view of the street. And by that I mean the you could see the street fine, the view itself wasn't that good looking. It always kinda looks gloomy and depressing out. I really don't like this room. There's hardly enough room on the floor for us to sleep and no more than one person can fit on the bed at a time without one of them falling off in the night. All in all, it's a pretty crappy room.

"I don't think so." Hisa responded. "We're not even done clearing the Labyrinth and we're nowhere near high enough level to go anywhere near the boss if we do find him."

"Well, we're not, but he might be." I said looking at Hisa and giving a head gesture towards Hoshi.

Hisa shook her head as she spoke. "I don't care if he is in the top twenty of the highest leveled players, his level still isn't high enough to face to boss."

"Speaking of which, how did you get so far ahead of us? We do most of our training together, don't we?" I questioned.

"We'll, I've been doing a lot of work on my own to level up." He explained.

"Why didn't you ask us to come with you!? This whole time, we could have been so much better than we are, but now we've already fallen behind." I complained.

"But I did." He explained. "You just blew me off and said something like 'I don't want to do any more work than I have to.'"

"Oh."

"That's Masato for ya." Hisa chimed in. "He we are, trapped in a game where we have ten times the physical capability, and he still won't get of his lazy but." She joked.

"Yeah, not even if his life depends on it!" Hoshi laughed.

"Whatever." I mumbled as I began eating my soup.

Hoshi and Hisa both just chuckled and began finishing theirs off as well.

After we finished our dinner, we all went to bed. Hisa said that it was a Thursday, so it was Hoshi's turn to take the bed. Hoshi turned out the lights and we all sat there in silence.

It was hard to get to sleep. I found myself staring at the ceiling, thinking about the new world we live in. You'd never know it by the way we were just joking around with each other, but we're all scared and sad. Usually we spend our dinner sitting in silence or have some gloomy conversation about the latest news or death count. We've all got our own families at home, waiting for us. Fear for our lives is one thing, but thinking about hurts. Hoshi has his parents, but no siblings. Hisa has two little brother and they use to get along well for the most part. Then there's my family. I've got an big brother and who I refer to as my baby sister. She's actually 6, so not a baby, but call her that anyway. Hisa and I have two parents as well. What are they doing right now, I wonder. There's almost no chance that our bodies aren't in the hospital, I wonder how often they visit. Will they keep visiting even if we're in here for years, or will they just forget about me? I don't know.

As if all that wasn't enough, we've also got the problems in the game to worry about. We may not make it out at all if we aren't careful. Our lives could come to an abrupt stop, just like the two-thousand others playing this damn game. It's even more dangerous for us than some other people because most of our armor is either cheep or a common drop. It's usually either thin plated armor or just some crappy leather stuff. I can count multiple occasions where I got a piece of armor and it broke before the end of the day. Hoshi gets the best drops out of us all because he can fight slightly higher level monsters, and even he only has a good sword. His sword, "The Light Weight," is a sidesword and decent quality for the level we're at. He got it the other day and we were all so excited. That was before we found out that it wasn't as helpful as we thought. Don't get me wrong, it definitely made a difference. But one person with a single decent quality item on a team of three isn't good enough.

At this rate, there's no telling how long it will take to find the boss. It could take months. What if it took a year? If it took a year to clear each floor, even the youngest players would be long dead before we reach floor ninety. We may never make it out of here! And if we do, how old will we be when we do? Will the world have moved on without us?

Staying up thinking and stressing for so long, I finally passed out. Even my dreams were plagued with worry and distress and I still wore a troubled expression long after falling asleep.

I woke up the next day due to light shining in my face. I thought I was sleeping in a spot where the sun wouldn't hit me from the window, was I wrong? No, I'm sure I made sure that the sun couldn't hit me.

It put my hand in front of my eyes to block the sun as I pried them open. I was right! As I moved out of the light I saw Hisa standing there with a mirror, shining the light coming in from the window into my face. She had an evil smile. I stood up and reached over to grab one of the pieces of silverware that we usually leave on the table. I got in position to through it at the mirror. 'I don't think mirrors have very high durability, so this should work,' I thought. I threw it and smiled. My smile quickly faded away. She hadn't bothered to move it, and the result just made her smile even bigger. Somehow, from such a short distance, I missed. 'I can't believe I actually missed! How could I have missed that!'

"You're gonna need Hoshi to give you lessons on throwing." Hisa chuckled.

"No!" I paused. "The sun was just in my eyes." I started, crossing my arms.

"Oh, you mean like this?" She asked sarcastically as she adjusted the mirror so that the sun was in my face again.

"Alright, alright, knock it off already!"

"Oh, alright."

She walked over and set the mirror down on the table and sat down at one of the chairs at the table. She opened the player interface and started flipping through the quests we've taken.

"We're gonna go questing today, so let's get going." She said.

"What? Now? But we haven't eaten breakfast!" I protested.

"No, you haven't eaten breakfast." She pointed out, looking back at the table.

I looked too. There was a plate with a fork and crumbs in Hisa's usual spot and Hoshi was sitting at his usual spot, asleep. He had his face buried in his arms.

"Oh, he passed out." Hisa began. "I guess you can eat while he's sleeping."

"Why is he sleeping now? He always does this. He falls asleep every day." I complained.

"He was up late. He spends every night training. I don't think he's realized yet that this world simulates sleep." She explained.

I turned to Hoshi with a concerned look and then sighed.

"What do you say we start training with him?" I asked.

"Then we'd all be falling asleep during battle. That'll get us kill for sure." Hisa retorted.

"Yeah, but if we spend more time training with him during the day, then maybe we can convince him to go to sleep earlier, rather than staying up all night and training alone." I explained.

Hisa spent a minute thinking it over. "It's worth a shot." She finally said.

After a moment, I went into the kitchen and started making breakfast. I started making eggs with some eggs that I bought the other day. It's good to know that we don't have to kill monsters for everything. Although, Hisa wasn't too happy that I "wasted" money on something like that. But we don't typically get good food items from drops, so I just ignore her.

After I finished, I put the egg on a plate and took it into the main room. I sat down at the table in my usual spot and began eating. It tasted like crap, but that's what happens when you don't train your cooking skill.

As I finished eat, Hoshi began to wake up. He looked really tired. 'Good timing' I though. 'Any earlier and I wouldn't have gotten to finishing eating.'

He raised his head and looked around as if he were in a daze and didn't know where he was. When he realized he was at the table he immediately stood up and opened his PI, player interface and started going through his inventory. He started equipped some of his more worn out gear. We must not be doing serious quests, or else he would've put on something better.

"Let's get going." He said plainly.

"You woke up five seconds ago and you want to go already?" I started. "You need to take it slower. You're gonna wear yourself out."

"The slower we take it, the slower we get out of here." He said.

"But we won't make it out at all if we push ourselves to death."

"And if we don't, then what?" He asked, closing the PI. "We've been looking for the boss for this long, and we still haven't found him. Even if it only takes a month or two to clear each floor, that would still take us between eight years and four months and sixteen years and eight months. That's assuming that it doesn't start taking longer the higher we go." He explained. He'd obviously put a lot of thought into this. "At the rate people are dying, nobody will be left after five or six months."

I hate to admit it, but he's right. I was just thinking the same thing last night. "Fine," I sighed "But you don't have to train alone."

"Really? Because you and Hisa seem to care more about your precious sleep than you do getting stronger."

"Hey, we're not talking about me or Hisa, we're talking about you're training! It's not good for you to stay up night after night and it's not safe to go out alone."

"Not good for me? It's a game Masato. Have you really not realized that yet?" He asked.

"No, you haven't realized that this isn't a game! What kind of game kills people!" I yelled.

"You're both right." Hisa said walking up to the table. "No stop arguing." She added, flicking me in the face.

"Me? He started it!"

She rolled her eyes. "You sound like a child. Am I your mother or something?" She complained.

"Might as well be. We all know he can't take care of himself." Hoshi retorted.

"What's with you!? You just woke up and you're all of a sudden treating me like you hate me!" I said.

"You're the one who started an argument with me right when I woke up!" He said.

"I wasn't trying to start an argument! I was just giving you a warning!" I responded.

"He's got a point, Hoshi. You've been really irritable lately. He wasn't starting an argument and he actually had a pretty good point. You're working too hard." Hisa pointed out.

Hoshi rolled his eyes and shook his head as he turned to leave. This kind of behavior wouldn't have been like him a few weeks ago, but he's been like this a lot ever since we got stuck here. As he approached the door he stopped. He sighed and turned his head back to us. "I'll train less if you both start training more. I'll need someone to pick up the slack after all."

"Sounds good." Hisa responded.

A/N: This chapter has been kind of weird. I feel like it turned out better than chapter one though. Or, at least, the first half did. The mood keeps switching, but that's because this chapter is sorta just to show what there life is like now. Chapter three will probably take place right after this.

Also, I apologize if I give a name to any item or person in my story that's already taken by anything in any of the books, manga, or anything else related or unrelated to SAO, or if I ever do.


End file.
